The measure to reduce the excise duty on diesel fuel should be adopted this week, to take effect starting next week, Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan said on Tuesday.
"It is a project that the Ministry of Finance must do, since it is about taxation. It is now calculating how it will be applied. From my point of view, this decision must be made this week to take effect starting next week, because it takes until you take a certain amount of fuel out of the warehouse. At the moment, the Romanian state, through the Ministry of Finance, has some additional revenues from VAT due to the increase in prices at the pump. These additional earnings are being calculated very clearly, other alternative sources are also being calculated by the Ministry of Finance in order to be able to support this decrease in excise duty, in a way that people end up having a lower cost at the final price. The way in which this is done is currently being worked out by the Ministry of Finance, because it is a taxation measure and I believe that this extremely important measure must be adopted this week," Ivan explained at the regional conference "The Economist Romania Government Roundtable".
According to the cited source, the measure to reduce the excise duty on diesel should be added to other measures adopted so far, such as limiting exports, reducing the bioethanol component in gasoline and reopening the Petrotel refinery.
Asked by journalists how much a liter of diesel would cost at the pump following the excise duty reduction, the Minister of Energy said that the figures could be provided by the Ministry of Finance after calculating the affordability of the budget.
As to fuel rationing, Ivan said that "this scenario is not being considered", emphasizing that Romania has sufficient reserves and alternative routes for supplying crude oil and diesel.
On the other hand, the minister explained the reasons why the excise duty reduction would only target diesel.
"The biggest impact on the Romanian market is on diesel, because here there were also the biggest increases and the highest prices, because Romania imports diesel directly and because in the case of gasoline we see that we have lower prices, because we produce gasoline and export about half of what we produce. That is, we ensure our internal needs. The total impact on the economy is in diesel, and on agriculture, and on transport, and on the food industry. So we prefer that the gain we make from not reducing the excise duty on gasoline be directed towards diesel in order to have a greater impact", stated Bogdan Ivan.
The energy minister also stated that Romania could only use state reserves when it is found that there are supply problems.
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